I am a nurse educator working with the BSN program at Vancouver Community College.
I enjoy being an adult learner, I took my master's in my 40's and completed my bachelor's in my 50's. You say, "that is the wrong order", I say, "why does there have to be an order?"

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Saturday, 30 May 2015

New Insights & Trends & Meetings

New Insights: What
new insights have you gained in terms of the variety of roles that adult
educators play?

I was
disconcerted by what appeared to be the "loosey-goosey" types of
role the adult educators played in MOOC's. Unless the learner has experience
with the knowledge how does the instructor evaluate the execution of that knowledge.

The things that disconcerted
me were:

The lack of competency knowledge transfer

The lack of opportunity for skill practice/experience

Blogs/online discussion groups can only go so far in the practice

Reflective journals can be "fudged" when created online

The lack of evaluation of experience

Evaluation of character of the learner needs to be done
face-to-face in many social professions

The formative and summative evaluation of "experience"
was also not evident in the instructor roles in the MOOC and
connectivist, networked classroom.

In the
nursing profession we need to have the opportunity for face-to face
evaluation of competencies needed for completion of the program and through
out the progression of learning in the program. Even in the PIDP
course, has two courses that must be given in class, the Delivery of
Instruction and Capstone course are not given online. The capstone project
can be video taped but it requires off line execution and skype can and is
used to provide a more face-to-face instructor - learner relationship.

I was
encouraged by the Karen Stephenson articles that encouraged apprenticeship
and mentorship. These develop the trust that was need to transfer knowledge.
(Kleiner, 2002, Stephenson)

Trends: What
are some trends in your field? How are you preparing to address these
trends?

I do see
that there are more and more online courses being offered. Of course the
clinical and lab courses could not be offered online for the reasons stated
above.

When
faced with an online chapter module in a recent class students who do not
want online learning as stated, "the reason we came to your college is
so that we could have face to face learning experiences because that is the
way we learn". Wang, Chen & Anderson (2014) have done some research
to give a framework for engagement and interaction. Poellhuber, Roy, &
Anderson (2011) researched the readiness for online collaboration, and
noticed a variation in readiness over age, gender with surprising results
that of who was ready for the online work and who was not.

I think
there will always be a reason to have the continuation of face-to-face
courses unless we can put more security checks in place. Recently we have
tried to put make use of Wiki's for our e-portfolios, there are a lot of
issues that come to the forefront when it comes to access to a portfolio that
carries through the program and negative summative evaluations are in place
for future instructors to peruse.

As long
as there are social sciences that have intra-personal engagement we will
continue to have a large measure of face-to-face courses. As long as we have
students who are adverse to online technology and have a learning style that
lends itself to face-to-face teaching we will continue to have physical
classrooms.

Meetings: How
was it?What was one thing that you
learned about from your learning partner?

My
web-conference ended up being a face-to-face conference with Magi
Scallion.

When I think of the
above post that seems rather apropos, since I have "scorned"
some of the online e-learning, taking note of lacks in the ability of the
instructor role to do physical experience based evaluations.

It
was lovely to meet with Magi, and discuss our research. We enjoyed a
dinner at a restaurant on my way to Fairmont Hot Springs, BC. I have gone
through a traumatic time with my family this past year. I lost both my
parents as a result of a house fire. So face-to-face communication was
much easier for me during this stressful time.

The
take away I got from the meeting with Magi was that we all have the
capacity to be charismatic leaders or teachers. She had looked at Seth
Godin's TED talk. February 2009, The tribes we lead. Having
a tribe or a class gives us the opportunity to practice and be that
charismatic teacher. This can happen much easier in a facilitated class
where there is no summative evaluation and where the learner has joined
your class because of a shared interest in what you are presenting.

It
was interesting connecting with someone whose perspective on education
was so different from where I was coming from as a nursing instructor.

Wang, Z., Chen, L., Anderson, T. (2014, April). A
Framework for Interaction and Cognitive Engagement in Connectivist Learning
Contexts. International Review of Research in Open and Distance
Learning, 15(2), 121-141

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About Me

I am a nurse educator working with the BSN program at Vancouver Community College.

I have been working there for 2 years now and enjoy the work despite the time that it takes to be an effective educator. Have traveled and worked in 6 countries besides my home country Canada. I have lived in 5/10 provinces. I am an adult learner, I took my master's in my 40's and completed my bachelor's in my 50's. You say, "that is the wrong order", I say, "why does there have to be an order?"